Dominic Dromgoole said it was becoming “harder and harder” for children "without means" to get into acting, adding it was a “real concern and a real worry”.

Cumberbatch has now defended the prevalence of public school actors, saying the industry is a “meritocracy”.

“People have tried to pull together a pattern because Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Redmayne, Damian Lewis and I were all privately educated. But James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy weren’t and they’re equally talented. It’s just lazy to try and create a private school elite.

“I’m definitely middle class, I think. I know others would argue, but I’m not upper class. Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you’re Royalty.”

He then added: “Ok, maybe I’m upper-middle class.”

In an interview this weekend, he said he had never disputed his upbringing but felt he was in a lose-lose situation when it came to class.

"You either come across as being arrogant and ungrateful if you complain about it, or being snooty and over-privileged if you bathe in it," he said.

Speaking of his appreciation for England, the actor also disclosed he had a “huge kick” on returning home from working in Nepal in his gap year, where he was left following a trail of yak droppings after getting lost.

“We got altitude sickness and amoebic dysentery,” he said. “We were lost for a day and a half, trekking at night and squeezing moss to get water. We slept in an animal hut that stank of dung and had hallucinogenic dreams because of the altitude sickness.”

Cumberbatch will soon appear in Star Trek into Darkness, released on May 17.